2. Patient records system

Until recently, all patient records were paper-based. Every time a patient was admitted to hospital many forms would be completed and added to their folder.

Treatments were recorded on paper charts and nursing records were documented by hand. Eventually these records were added to their file.

For a patient who was admitted to hospital regularly, their paper records could become very large and awkward to handle.

An even bigger problem was the risk of misfiling the records amongst the many thousands stored in the hospital.

Many hospitals are now switching over to computerised record-keeping.

This means that once they have entered patient details, no matter how many times that patient is admitted in the future, their records can be found very quickly.

Computerised record keeping systems allow details of medical treatments to be stored.

At the moment, a national NHS database is being developed which will enable the medical records of every person in the UK to be stored in one place.